Mood alteration with pen and ink.

I had a particularly rough month in March. Too much to do, too many commitments all coming to a head at the same time, not enough sleep. My head began to feel very scattered. I was sure I was missing vital details... stuff that would come sneaking up behind me in a few weeks to bite me (and I may have, only time will tell). It sort of felt like that dream everyone seems to have at one point or another... you show up for a college class feeling prepared and slowly realize that you have missed most of the semester and today is the final exam... only I wasn't asleep, I felt like that all the time. I was not a particularly nice person during this time; short temper, bad attitude, unable to see past my own 'stuff' to do much of anything for anyone else. My 'public face' suffered some, but my family took the brunt, as always. I am grateful that my kids are fairly independent and can do for themselves a bit, according to their age.

Now that it is April and some of my commitments from last month are over I have a little time to breathe again. I am still catching up with things piled up from last month, but I feel like I am starting to come out of it. Part of that has meant taking some time to do more than scribble doodles in my notebooks during class. I thought that would be enough to get me by for a while - I know from experience that I go a little nuts when I don't do anything creative; but it turns out that sitting down with 'real' paper and a 'real' pen (although most of my black ones seem to be used up) is the 'real deal'. Since posting to the Diva Challenge last week I have felt a little better. Taking that time made a difference. This week's challenge using Tuxedo was not as tempting as the Mooka challenge. There is something irresistible to me about Mooka but I was not drawn immediately to Tuxedo... but I sat down last night after folding 4 loads of laundry (chores first!) and did a couple of things with it anyway. They turned out better than I expected and made clear that Tuxedo is a very flexible tangle. I hope my mental state continues to improve, whether because of taking the time to tangle (T5) or just catching up on my work. I will give credit to creativity, if only to have an excuse to do it more.

Along with Kunstler, Paradox and Antidots, Tuxedo shows up twice here...
can you spot the substitution of straight lines for curved ones?

This one is round because I got tired of the square. This one aspires to
imitate Inapod a bit and I tried out MrE for the first time as well.